Halloween's War On Election Day

How the second-richest family in America depresses voter turnout.

Exercising the franchise on Halloween.

I’m a little off my game today. We all are, and not just because today is the most important election of our lifetimes. It’s also our circadian rhythms. The United States switched over to standard time Sunday, and it takes the human body a week to recover from that. Unfortunately, the most important election of our lifetimes was scheduled two days after the changeover, which has been shown to depress voter turnout.

Thank the candy manufacturers. In 2005 the candy lobby got Congress to push back the switch to standard time by one week so the kiddies could have one hour more of daylight during which to trick-or-treat. Election Day was collateral damage. Almost every year (some years the Gregorian calendar situates Election Day before the changeover) we’re all a little groggy on Election Day—too groggy, many of us, to get it together to get to the polls. I wrote at greater length about Halloween’s assault on voting three years ago, here. This year I addressed the problem by voting early on Halloween (see above), which seemed appropriate given the terrifying possible outcome.

The candy industry is a near-monopoly dominated by Mars, a family-owned corporation headquartered in the Washington, D.C. suburb of McLean, which is also (conspiracy theorists take note) where the CIA resides. Let me tell you a little bit about the Marses. They are the mightiest family dynasty in greater Washington—the second richest family in America, bested only by the Waltons—but you almost never read about them in The Washington Post because they keep a maniacally low profile. Occasionally, though, the mask will slip. Earlier this year my wife and I went to see the Washington Shakespeare Company’s excellent production of Macbeth starring Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma (now streamable, incidentally, on National Theater at Home). Waiting to enter a makeshift warehouse auditorium set up, at considerable expense, in Northeast Washington, I looked at a poster for the production and noticed that the name “Mrs. Jacqueline Badger Mars” appeared in lettering that was larger than that for Fiennes, Varma, or William Shakespeare. It was a brief but telling glimpse of who really runs Washington. I took a photo to record it for posterity:

Now that I’ve persuaded you that I’m completely off my nut, please read my latest New Republic piece, which explains why I sort-of hope Donald Trump wins the popular vote while losing in the Electoral College. I’m not the only person who thinks this is a genuine possibility, and if it happens it could be the final straw that gets the United States to start electing presidents directly, by popular vote. You can read my piece here. And also: Please vote. If you don’t, Halloween wins, and we can’t let that happen.